‘How an English gentleman could behave in such a manner is beyond my comprehension.’
Sherlock Holmes, ‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’
Although Major Hambrough was yet to realize it, Alfred Monson was not a man to be taken at face value. The image he presented to the world was a composite of truths, half-truths and outright lies – and trying to unpick them was all but impossible. Unfortunately for Cecil Hambrough, Monson and Tot had quickly worked out that the boy’s father was readily impressed by the right kind of accent and a well-turned phrase, and Alfred was a man to whom smooth talking came naturally. Already creaking beneath the many worries that burdened him, the Major had neither the inclination nor the energy to conduct a thorough background check on the man to whom he was about to entrust his beloved son and heir. Monson seemed like a good thing and that was quite enough for now.
Yet even the most rudimentary enquiries would have raised suspicions as to the tutor’s true character. Anyone trying to trace his name in the registers of Oxford University, for instance, or any of the country’s pre-eminent schools, would struggle to find him. Then there was the curious question of his flight from South Africa. Why did a young gentleman starting out on what seemed like a most promising career in government service simply pack it all in? Especially for the less secure and potentially less rewarding role of a privately engaged teacher? Agnes and Alfred had fallen in love while still in their teens and she had clearly believed that when he moved overseas, he intended to stay for a decent long while. Otherwise why would she go to the trouble of transporting herself halfway around the world to reunite with him? This at a time when travel for a woman journeying alone – particularly a young and beautiful one – was fraught with peril. She also was at serious risk of losing her good name by such a wanton pursuit. If Monson had rejected her, her future would have been very uncertain, her image forever sullied in the eyes of Victorian society’s moral guardians. Yet they were back in Britain within a matter of weeks. What had happened to so alter Monson’s assumed career trajectory? What occurred in Cape Town that made it so uncomfortable – if not impossible – for Monson to stay that he ended his stint as a colonial administrator even before it had really begun? The idea, as it was put about back in England, that he had simply grown tired of life abroad pushed the bounds of credibility – although the exact circumstances of his return have never come to light.
Regardless, for a while the Monsons seemed like they were making a decent go of life together – even if Agnes reputedly wished Alfred had not been so eager to turn his back on Africa. Once they had returned to Britain, they moved first to Retford, an attractive market town in Nottinghamshire, where Alfred was employed by a Captain Jebb to tutor his sons. The Monsons quickly became fixtures in the local smart set. To anyone meeting them for the first time, they must have seemed thoroughly honourable and decent types. But the costs of fostering friendships with those of an apparently comparable social class were already forcing them to live well beyond their means. Nor did Monson take kindly to having to worry about money, and he was no longer enjoying teaching – he felt it such a mundane way to keep the coffers filled for a man sure he was made for better things. He was constantly dreaming up schemes to make his fortune but could persuade none of his wealthy friends or acquaintances to invest.
As his frustrations grew and his commitment to his pupils fell away, Retford lost its appeal. By 1886, Monson was ready for a change of scene. That year a formidable property called Cheyney Court, not far from Castle Frome in the county of Herefordshire, came up for rental. Built in the Tudor age on land where a monastery once stood, the mansion (which had been expanded and improved many times over the intervening years – especially during the Jacobean period) was owned by the Kier family. However, James Kier, who had inherited it eight years earlier, was keen to move on. The grandeur of the building must have appealed to Monson’s sense of his own worth and he shuffled his finances until he found a way to take up the lease. Cheyney Court now became Alfred Monson’s private preparatory school.
But it was not long before his hopes that the school would be a financial success were extinguished. Even with an initially promising number of paying pupils, his expenditure exceeded his income by some distance. Now, though, he started to benefit from another income stream – insurance payouts following a series of fires (of which there were at least three) that took place at the house over the two years he was resident there. The worst of these, which utterly gutted the main building, occurred in 1888. Not only was the structure devastated but valuable contents, including antique furniture and works of art, also disappeared forever. The Monsons received around £2,000 for the loss of their personal property and, although there were widely held suspicions of foul play, the authorities could find no firm evidence that the tenant was responsible.
Another conflagration that happened a few months earlier cast Monson’s character in an even murkier light. On that occasion, neighbours had seen smoke spewing from Cheyney Court’s stable block and rushed there to lend whatever help they could. They were surprised, however, to discover that Monson had done nothing to free the horses trapped inside the burning building. ‘Why the devil don’t you loose the horses?’ asked one man. Monson told them that he did not know where the key to the stable door was, so it fell to a group of burly locals to smash their way in with axes and save the animals. In financial terms, this was bad news for Monson. The stables were the property of the landlord, who would receive any compensation in the event of their damage. But the horses were Monson’s own and their accidental destruction was the only means by which he would secure a personal payday. Monson had been a keen horseman since childhood but the evidence suggests he could set aside any sentimental attachment to the creatures if there was a pound or two to be made.
Unsurprisingly, Monson got a cool reception from his neighbours in the days and weeks that followed. By the time the final fire of his tenure had burnt itself out and taken the ancient property with it, the finger of suspicion must have been all but unbearable, even for a character as brazen as Monson. As was becoming his go-to strategy, his way out of an uncomfortable situation was simply to move on to try his luck elsewhere. Monson closed up the school and fled town, leaving behind a stack of unpaid bills to local tradesmen and shopkeepers. Reputedly, even the local vicar had become embroiled after agreeing to stand as security for about £300 in loans.
The next few years were an ongoing race in which Monson strived to keep one step ahead of his many creditors. The situation became even more critical as Alfred and Agnes began to add to their family (there would be three children by 1893). In 1887, there was a further complication when Monson’s father died and with him went the small allowance that he had provided for Alfred. The Monsons ended up flitting from one home to another, performing financial sleights of hand at every turn.
Alfred, though, clung to the belief that his quick wits would eventually turn their fortunes around. Yet each failed scheme only mired him further into debt. One seemingly promising financial avenue was his interest – through his wife – in the Mount Osborne Colliery in Yorkshire. It had belonged to Agnes’s father, William Day, who had taken over his brother’s shares in the business back in the 1840s. Under William’s steady guidance, it had turned a profit year in and year out for decades but, without him at the helm, it had fallen into disuse by 1884. Alfred and Agnes now claimed a one-eighth stake in the defunct colliery and Alfred planned to use their prospective share to raise a loan and attract investors with a view to relaunching the business. But with depressing predictability, the venture failed to get off the ground. By the time Monson was prepared to write it off, he had run up a debt of £627 to a creditor in respect of unspecified ‘promotional expenses’.
The Monsons then took up a six-month tenancy on a residential property, although Alfred prematurely broke off this agreement on the grounds that the house had drainage problems. By that point he had decided to invest the money that he received from the Cheyney Court fires into another business that, on the face of it, had a credible chance of success. Monson the horse-lover (at least, when he was not plotting to burn them to death) decided to establish a stud farm and in 1889 found a suitable property to rent – Gaddesley Farm in Horley, Surrey. Using a mixture of his own capital, a bank loan and a £2,000 injection from another investor who did not yet have reason to mistrust him, Monson planned to breed and trade high-quality chargers. There was always a profitable market for such prestigious beasts among the military classes and his instinctive feel for horses ought to have stood him in good stead.
This time, though, his need to meet the immediate financial demands upon him saw off his longer-term ambitions. Monson made the decision – reckless even by his own standards – to take out a £200 loan from a moneylender by the name of Brown. In return, he offered a bill of sale on the farm stock. Monson’s fellow investor was, of course, kept entirely in the dark. When Brown turned up on the appointed day to make a claim on the promised stock, Monson was nowhere to be found. He had moved on again, leaving another furious creditor and an even more irate business partner to pick through the mess. That Monson was prepared to sacrifice a potentially promising business for the sake of such a relatively paltry sum as £200 points either to his accelerating financial incompetence or, perhaps more likely, to his growing desperation to get his hands on some money – any money – and damn the consequences.
Monson’s business partner was not to be brushed off, though, and called in the police. In 1890, Monson was arrested and charged with fraud – an accusation he was to face in the land’s leading criminal court, the Old Bailey in London. In the event, Monson was acquitted on technical grounds but it was a pointer to the future: he was starting to push his luck a step too far.
After the trial, the Monsons moved back to The Woodlands in Yorkshire – where they had been living since just before Monson’s arrest – and to the casual onlooker seemed to be enjoying the high life. It was a bravura performance by Alfred, who was sticking with his gamble that if one appeared to be a gentleman, one could live like a gentleman even if one lacked a gentleman’s bank balance. Indeed, it was his contention – shared only with a few close acquaintances – that such was the power of his family name that he could ‘stock a five-floored warehouse on the strength of it’. For a while, his confidence did not seem misplaced. He bought provisions on credit from local shops and engaged workmen who trusted that a man such as he would be sure to pay them in good time. He did not even feel the need to cut back on his collection of horses, paying just enough upfront to secure local stabling.
The extravagant dinners continued, too, with Monson inviting local worthies on the basis that, as he told Agnes, he would never cultivate a friendship of which he could not make use. His guests, meanwhile, were utterly charmed by their debonair host – who always kept the food coming and the drink flowing – and his wife, blessed with undeniable beauty and good manners. What Monson could not obtain on personal credit, he paid for using a £700 overdraft agreed with the York City and County Bank. Monson could sweet-talk a bank manager as easily as any of the other marks he preyed upon – at least for the time being.
Of course, the charade could not go on forever. Within a year, there was growing disquiet among those who had supplied Monson with goods and services on account. In the end, it was the bank that lost patience first when they sent round the bailiffs to recover property in lieu of repayments on the overdraft. But when they arrived, Monson assured them that none of the property at The Woodlands was his (he was now in the habit of making many of his purchases in his wife’s name as means of protecting at least some of their assets from creditors) and so they left empty-handed. Meanwhile, he told his friends and associates that he felt he had been treated utterly shabbily by the bank. Had they waited a few days, he claimed indignantly, he would have benefited from the realization of certain securities worth more than enough to cover any monies owed. For its part, the York City and County Bank did not mention the affair too loudly, judging that it did little to enhance its reputation. Cecil Hambrough – young and naive and having joined the Monson home only a few months earlier – seemingly bought his tutor’s story without hesitation. Nonetheless, Monson realized that the time was approaching to set down new roots elsewhere.
The veil of embarrassed silence that descended among those taken in by this evident swindler allowed Alfred to weave a new web of deceit – this time at Riseley Hall. By now the number of properties inhabited by Alfred and Agnes since they had married was into double figures. The fees Monson was earning from tutoring, plus revenues from Agnes’s separate estate (courtesy of her father), ought to have been enough to sustain a perfectly decent standard of living for the couple. But he simply would not curtail his spending.
As ever, he capitalized on his gent’s demeanour to secure credit and employed staff to cater for his every need. There was a butler, a coachman, a governess for the children, several female domestic servants, farmhands and additional staff to look after the horses. He even employed a tutor for Cecil at a cost of £150 per year (with bed and board thrown in), despite being paid £300 to oversee the job himself. Monson would deny himself nothing and with precious little in the way of assets – the roll call of creditors in the background was growing ever longer – he boxed clever with his financial arrangements. He increasingly used Agnes as the front for his dealings, opening bank accounts in her name and recording possessions as hers to protect them from anyone calling in a debt against him.
Nonetheless, he could not fend off the inevitable and in August 1892 – having sold the last two horses in his possession and having had furniture in his name to the value of £35 seized by bailiffs – he was declared bankrupt. Yet even now the game was not up. Life at Riseley Hall for a while appeared to continue much as before. When a gap in the finances opened up, Tot, back in London, was happy enough to fill it – though on the clear understanding that one day in the not too distant future he would reap the rewards of his ‘generosity’.
For Alfred and Agnes, however, the reality was that their quality of life seems to have taken a nosedive around this time as Monson’s desperation at his situation increased. Where once the couple had entertained well-born guests at cultured soirées, the Hall now became the scene for debauched evenings of drinking and revelry. Monson could take his liquor with the best of them but held back so as to keep his wits about him – all the better to take advantage of anyone foolish enough to overindulge in his company. Agnes, though, would recall a ‘peculiarly unpleasant crew’ that regularly descended upon her home.
Meanwhile, Alfred, having immersed himself in a world of deceit and deception, found his trust in his fellow man correspondingly diminished – like the adulterer worried that he himself shall be cheated upon. Not even Agnes would escape his wrath, with Cecil stepping in to protect her from bodily violence on at least one occasion. Nonetheless, Hambrough stayed devoted to the couple through it all. Even when the tutor that Monson had hired proved unequal to the job, Cecil easily overlooked the lapse. He was far more interested in living the grand life of a young and lusty gent – roaming around the country during the day and carousing at night – that Alfred made possible for him. And when he tired of roistering, Agnes was there to act as a counter-balance. She was unstinting in her efforts to ensure that he felt like one of the family. A good conversationalist with an engagingly easy manner, she would now and then take a walk out with him, the pair doubtless delighting in the spectacular views offered by the Yorkshire landscape. Riseley Hall was not so much a home from home for Cecil but a positive upgrade on the life he had left behind.
Yet his position within the Monson set-up had changed in ways far beyond his imagination. The time was coming, as far as Monson was concerned, when he needed to start seeing a real return on the time and effort he had invested in the boy. When Monson committed to act as his tutor in 1890, he was exploiting a new cash cow. The £300-a-year that the Major agreed to stump up was not to be sniffed at. On top of that, there was the potential to benefit from the family’s wider economic circumstances. By helping the Major restore some equilibrium to his finances, there was the opportunity for Monson to do the same for himself. His motivations for becoming involved with the Hambroughs were never noble, of course, but in the three intervening years his own position had starkly deteriorated. Now a registered bankrupt with a number of near misses with the police and in the criminal courts to his name, his faith that he could simply charm his way through life had taken a knock. It was getting harder to talk his way to new credit, and the house of cards that he had constructed over the previous dozen years was in real danger of collapse – even as Cecil remained blithely oblivious to the fact.
The pressure was on Monson to get his hands on some serious money. Not the odd £200 from a moneylender secured on a false promise, but the sort of sum that could set him up for the long term and keep him in the manner to which he had become accustomed. Such was the complexity of Major Hambrough’s own financial tangle that neither Monson nor Tot harboured much hope of a quick cash-in now. But Cecil was still a promising prospect – a boy who, on reaching his majority in April 1894, would be in line to access some real wealth.